That's in response to a New Yorker article quoting something Cruz said in a speech 3 years ago. (What Cruz said back then, at an Americans for Prosperity conference, was that when he was at Harvard Law School "There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.")

The Cruz spokesperson called it "curious that the New Yorker would dredge up a three-year-old speech and call it 'news.'"

Curious... there's a noncommittal word. I don't see anything wrong with digging stuff out of old Cruz speeches. He's a new character on the national stage, so it's not like old territory is being reworked. It was an inflammatory statement, and he needs to stand by it (and back it up), defend it as hyperbole, or concede he was wrong.The New Yorker writer, Jane Mayer, was following up after Barbara Boxer had compared Cruz to Joseph McCarthy. That was pretty inflammatory too (as I said at the time). What Boxer said made it a valid line of inquiry for Mayer and not odd at all. What you say to your base will be heard by the outsiders too, and any politician needs to be prepared for that. Republicans hoping for a new star better not forget how badly Mitt Romney faltered when he had to deal with the 47% remark he'd used on the insider group. This Cruz quote is the same kind of thing. Don't minimize it.

Mayer talked to Charles Fried, the Harvard lawprof who was probably the one Republican referred to by Cruz. Fried says:

"I have not taken a poll, but I would be surprised if there were any members of the faculty who ‘believed in the Communists overthrowing the U.S. government".... Fried acknowledged that "there were a certain number (twelve seems to me too high) who were quite radical, but I doubt if any had allegiance or sympathy with anything called ‘the Communists,’ who at that time (unlike the thirties and forties) were in quite bad odor among radical intellectuals.” He pointed out that by the nineteen-nineties, Communist states were widely regarded as tyrannical. From Fried’s perspective, the radicals on the faculty were "a pain in the neck." But he says that Cruz’s assertion that they were Communists “misunderstands what they were about."

Clearly, it was rhetoric to call the Critical Legal Studies professors "Marxists" who believed in "Communist" revolution, and Cruz chose to do that at a particular place and time. Cruz is accountable for that. It's a shibboleth of the right to rely on the words "Marxist" and "Communist." It wasn't the way the lefty lawprofs of the time talked about themselves. I have a vivid memory of saying to a CLS lawprof — a very good friend, during a casual conversation — "I'd like to know about the connection between CLS and Marxism." She snapped: "There's none." I got the message: You sound right wing. It was understood that to sound right wing was to become toxic.

Left-liberal rights analysis submerges the student in legal rhetoric, but, because of its inherent vacuousness, can provide no more than an emotional stance against the legal order. The instrumental Marxist approach is highly critical of law, but also dismissive. It is no help in coming to grips with the particularity of rules and rhetoric, because it treats them, a priori, as mere window dressing. In each case, left theory fails left students because it offers no base for the mastery of ambivalence. What is needed is to think about law in a way that will allow one to enter into it, to criticize without utterly rejecting it, and to manipulate it without self-abandonment to their system of thinking and doing.

225 comments:

I was at HLS about the same time as Cruz. The Crits were already fading into history and the student body was focused on taking advantage of the 90s economic boom, not whatever Duncan Kennedy was talking about.

If Cruz thinks there were a dozen Communists on the faculty who supported the overthrow of the government, he should be able to come up with the names. He won't because he can't. Charles Fried has Cruz's number on this one.

Cruz is revealing uncomfortable truths about Academias anti-liberty "progressive" culture. Of course he must be discredited and destroyed. Thats why they are digging this stuff up to try to mischaracterize him as a kook.

Cruz has chosen to be controversial. He seems able to handle the heat it draws from the left. I expect he will soon be quoting the CLS profs writing. I don't think it will hurt him as I don't expect the New York Times, or even our present host, to be supportive. He is a brilliant guy. I do agree that Romney did not handle the 47% comment as well as he could have.

Being a reformed leftist, I think Cruz is more right than wrong. For crissakes I watched future high-level Clinton administration appointees toast "socialism" in the 1980s after the passage of a state "bottle deposit" law.

Clearly, it was rhetoric to call the Critical Legal Studies professors "Marxists" who believed in "Communist" revolution, and Cruz chose to do that at a particular place and time. Cruz is accountable for that. It's a shibboleth of the right to rely on the words "Marxist" and "Communist."

I'd say take a look at the positions of those professors in the 1980s, before international communist movement was essentially defeated and rendered the point moot -- or too embarrassing for them to admit.

Timing is important. The left was full of "neo-Marxist"... well, at least before Communism unraveled in the early 1990s.

For example, I bet you they all supported the Sandinistas and "revolution" in Central America. Remember CISPES?

Believe it or not, that was "believing in Communist revolution".

Of course, nobody said they were for communism.

But funny how all those "peoples" struggles all died down and the Sandinistas faded immediately after the fall of Soviet communism.

BTW, Fried seems to have become the go-to HLS conservative to resurrect the reputation of left-leaning faculty, as he did for Warren.

Republicans hoping for a new star better not forget how badly Mitt Romney faltered when he had to deal with the 47% remark he'd used on the insider group.

Baloney. He did nothing of the sort. He stood by it - which is what he should have done.

This Cruz quote is the same kind of thing. Don't minimize it.

Now you're buying the Choom propaganda, complete with thanking Bucketmouth's grandson for the tape.

somefeller said...

I was at HLS about the same time as Cruz. The Crits were already fading into history and the student body was focused on taking advantage of the 90s economic boom, not whatever Duncan Kennedy was talking about.

If Cruz thinks there were a dozen Communists on the faculty who supported the overthrow of the government, he should be able to come up with the names. He won't because he can't. Charles Fried has Cruz's number on this one.

If anyone on the political scene needs to be called out on their hyperbole it's our Hyperbolist in Chief, and on current efforts, not 3 year old distractions. Don't join the ongoing squirrel hunt. It's overcrowded already.

"I was at HLS about the same time as Cruz. The Crits were already fading into history and the student body was focused on taking advantage of the 90s economic boom, not whatever Duncan Kennedy was talking about."

Cruz seems like he was the kind of student who isn't interested in the faculty, and Fried is saying there was actually all this nuance. Cruz could mean: I was there to get my Harvard degree and I saw the faculty as a means to my end; as intellectuals, they were a bunch of Communists and I couldn't care less about the details.

His other big mistake was accepting the pushback at the second debate.

He was too nice. I don't think that's true of Cruz. I think he will fight. I don't think he has to fight every time someone challenges him, but he cannot minimize this stuff that will be dug up from his old speeches.

His new quote (from the spokesperson) does restate what he meant, and it is defensible, but we saw the insider version of Cruz, which was willing to label the lawprofs as Marxists. That seems crude, but it's not as crude as Boxer calling him a Joe McCarthy.

Republicans hoping for a new star better not forget how badly Mitt Romney faltered when he had to deal with the 47% remark he'd used on the insider group. This Cruz quote is the same kind of thing. Don't minimize it.

Well, I think the difference here would be that the average person wouldn't find Cruz's comment at all controversial.

Relatedly, I do wish that right-wingers would consider rolling back the use of the word 'communist.' By and large people younger than baby boomers do not really understand what that means or why it's bad. It just sounds like something your geezer winger uncle posts on Facebook and therefore hurts more than it helps.

he needs to stand by it (and back it up), defend it as hyperbole, or concede he was wrong.

Alas, it's obviously hyperbole, tho not that outrageous to any intelligent person.

But the lamestream media still controls & the rule is

The minimal failings or minimal invented failings of all Republicans/ Conservatives must be maximized;

The maximum failings of all Dems/Libs/ Progressives/Socialists/Marxists must be minimized. (That is when not ignored.)

That being said, while this remark will cause the usual "there were no real witches" Lefties to get ever so excited, I'm not sure that this remark will hurt him with the same low-info voters who took the "47%" remark personally.

Cruz seems like he was the kind of student who isn't interested in the faculty, and Fried is saying there was actually all this nuance.

I actually give Cruz more credit than that. He was active in Federalist Society circles (as was I, times change) and that group tended to be more intellectually engaged with faculty and theory than students who were just marking time before going to a big law firm, if only to stir up a little trouble. But you're a lawprof so maybe you're more familiar with law student typology.

So the net effect here is that Ted Cruz might be technically incorrect (the left-wing Harvard faculty never really thought about a Communist revolution in the U.S.); but the Harvard faculty looks ridiculous when one sees how politically unbalanced it really is.

The funny thing is that Ted Cruz, probably rightly, has used his Harvard Law degree to his advantage. Just like the left-wing members of the Harvard faculty have cynically used the institution's stature in the heart of American capitalism to enjoy a cushy existence of wealth and privilege.

We never did get to see Elizabeth Warren's personnel file from Harvard Law, did we?

It is so, so true. The Left saves its most potent venom for conservatives from minority groups. Time and time again.

"Republicans hoping for a new star better not forget how badly Mitt Romney faltered when he had to deal with the 47% remark he'd used on the insider group."

There were plenty of worse remarks by Obama, but when the press is in your corner, and they can so effectively get others to join them in the distraction, there is little that can be done. Even if Romney never made that statement of fact, he was not going to win. The two campaigns were so far apart on seriousness and honesty that to think that one issue or anything else said was determinant is to completely miss what happened. Stupidity happened, and when stupid is determined, it cannot be resisted or explained with reason.

The right needs to continue to lose the stupid, until their stupidity is self-evident. I'm sure plenty of Obama voters get nuanced dialogue though.

" By and large people younger than baby boomers do not really understand what that means or why it's bad. It just sounds like something your geezer winger uncle...."

Actually, that's how boomers of the time felt about our uncles railing about the commies.

Bob Dylan made fun of that in the 1960s.

The CLS folk Cruz is complaining about were just boomers who grew up and got comfy jobs and needed to find a way to make sense of their trajectory of their lives. Where do you think the smartest yippies went?

To elaborate, true socialists/communists believed themselves to be materialists and realists. And you have to take them as they come.

It's not that they were against a revolution in the US, with them at the helm of course, but didn't see it in the cards.

They saw revolution in the US as unlikely, and so looked to international revolution as the long road to bringing revolution eventually to the US.

Seriously, this was the belief pattern.

In the meanwhile, they contented themselves "working within the system" doing exactly what Obama is doing now: increasing the size, scope and influence of the government, weakening broad swaths of the private sector, and increasing dependence.

Like all commies, the good life certainly blunted their revolutionary zeal, but the totalitarian instincts survive, even if only to enrich themselves at this point.

C'mon Cruz, know your neo-Marxists and be accurate. You don't want to be seen feeding the anti-commie red-meat to the base, riding some tide of McCarthyite populism against Obama's moderate, mainstream progressive expansion of government and rights.

His other big mistake was accepting the pushback at the second debate.

I cut him some slack on this. Not too many people Romney's age are strong enough to push Candy Crowley even a little bit.

This was a big mistake. He should have been totally prepped on the issue and, as soon as Crowley became an advocate, as she did, he should have told her to get the fuck off the stage and let the men debate.

His other big mistake was accepting the pushback at the second debate.

Disagree on both counts. The whole "he didn't fight" is the Libertarian attempt to put themselves as leaders of Conservatism. Romney went after Barry hard, hard enough to have the lead up to the last week or so.

As for the second debate, Crowley was supposedly looking at the transcript and he wasn't, so it's alittle hard to fight that one at the time.

He was too nice.

Newt would disagree.

I don't think that's true of Cruz. I think he will fight.

Exactly, he's read Uncle Saul and he knows how these weasels work.

I don't think he has to fight every time someone challenges him, but he cannot minimize this stuff that will be dug up from his old speeches.

I would submit this kind of thing only bothers the Gray Lady's readers.

Why are socialst faculty members so bothered when they are called communists? True, the soviets have tarnished the brand but I can still remember debating lefty professors back in the 1980's who at least had the integrity to spell out how they differed from soviet's and where they were wrong. Seems like Ted hit paydirt. Why apologize for speaking the truth?

Senator Robert Taft, the evil conservative of his generation, spoke out against the internment of Japanese-American citizens at the time it was happening. Can anyone name a single victim of MaCarthyism who did likewise?....I suppose there's an element of hyperbole to Cruz's observation, but the true scandal is the aptness of his observation. The Marxists are not Stalinists, but why are there more of them on Harvard than there are Republicans?

Of course history has proven that McCarthy was right, the State Dept and FDR's Administration WAS shot thru with Communist spies, sympathizers and fellow-travelers. What George Orwell once said of a Tory British MP as equally despised by British "intellectuals" and leftist politicians as was McCarthy (and now Cruz) by the American left when the unpleasant fact of Japanese POW torture and medical experimentation was being brought up immediately post-war at a time when everyone just wanted to "move on" is true today: "What you have to understand is that these things actually happened, despite the fact that Lord X says they happened." What Orwell said in 1945 was to become equally true of McCarthy and now of Cruz as well..

"Gotta learn to play without the press in your corner or you Republicans will lose again and again."

I don't see how a Republican can ever get elected president now that the liberal media have realized just how really powerful their control of the culture is after having destroyed Bush, Sarah Palin and Romney's reputations.

He needed to make clear that the 47% included the Obama voters who would not listen to his arguments. It was twisted to apply to low income voters, not necessarily voting for Obama. He should have made that clear.

"Gotta learn to play without the press in your corner or you Republicans will lose again and again."

They Republicans have always been in this position. What you don't realize, is that they do best when they are most honest and most conservative. When they attempt to play to the press they lose both the race and their principles.

The press is not really the problem, any more than it ever was with Reagan who had press so negative it bordered on retarded, but he won overwhelmingly. The problem is the electorate. It has been dumbed-down to where it can't be talked to. It needs to see and feel it's mistakes, and it will. This is not the first time we have been here, but it is the most serious.

You say post-Marxist, I said neo-Marxist. Is there a there there, a foundation in classical Marxism?

I will say our mainstream media outlets are leading themselves into the vortex of post-modern, post-Marxist, race theory, environmentalism, relativist liberalism, which is to say, progressivism under dear leader's guidance.

It will be fun to watch them extricate themselves from that tar pit.

My guess is that many of them won't, and worst case scenario is we'll have the fourth estate more like a little piece of Europe on our shores.

If Cruz thinks there were a dozen Communists on the faculty who supported the overthrow of the government

In my opinion, a "crit" is somebody who thinks the Supreme Court should--quietly and secretly--seize power. A crit is calling on an unelected ruling class to start doing economic redistribution.

For example, Mark Tushnet is a prominent crit. He wrote that cases should be resolved by how they advance the cause of socialism.

Since (obviously) the Supreme Court is not supposed to be doing that sort of thing, there is a fair amount of deceit involved. Tushnet is one of the more honest crits and it is fair to call him a Marxist.

There were plenty of worse remarks by Obama, but when the press is in your corner...

Gotta learn to play without the press in your corner or you Republicans will lose again and again.

No point whining about that! That's what you have to be ready for.

You Republicans?

In any case, it's been the norm since Goldwater, Republicans have won anyhow. It's the institutionalized and pervasive vote fraud that's the issue.

When you put the Romster and Choom in the same room, it was no contest, remember?

Michael K said...Romney's comment was targeted at the average person.

He needed to make clear that the 47% included the Obama voters who would not listen to his arguments. It was twisted to apply to low income voters, not necessarily voting for Obama. He should have made that clear.

I thought he did in the video and later when he was challenged about it.

Of course, he used plain, understandable English, so that may have been his problem.

No "You didn't build that" or "Put y'all back in chains".

phx said...

If the GOP never cries "foul" at the pervasive media bias it reduces its chances of winning.

The trouble with this theory is that GOPs crying foul over the media remind people of the GOP crying "Communist" whenever someone disagrees with them

The Professoriate has been attacked & you assume, Pauline Kael-like, that because those in the same intellectualoid bubble of you professors, i.e., the chattering class, the lamestream media... that the low-info voter will also be upset, that Cruz is in trouble for his hyperbole.

As The Godfather would put it, the 47% was personal to the low-info voter; Communism/Marxism in The Groves of Academe — if I may channel another McCarthy? zzzzzzz.

Look, your professoriate, the chattering class, the rest of the Left may be sold on the GOP as anti-wymyn, anti gay, anti minority, anti immigration, anti science, but Joe McCarthy? Was he the guy who forgot to touch second base for The Red Sox back when? Was that the name of that ventriloquist’s dummy?

I agree with Jay.

Well, I think the difference here would be that the average person wouldn't find Cruz's comment at all controversial.

Faculty recruit people they can get along with, people who are cheap, or people who they think will publish a lot. Ideally, a combination of all three. It's time and effort to get someone hired, from pushing the Dean to allow the hiring process to start, to having them come in, to interviewing them, to dickering with hiring parameters, and on and on. Why do that with someone who is always going to argue with you over politics and other viewpoints unrelated to getting the day-to-day work done? (Unless you like arguing, and in my experience, most professors, even law professors, don't like arguing for the sake of arguing).

I have a vivid memory of saying to a CLS lawprof — a very good friend, during a casual conversation — "I'd like to know about the connection between CLS and Marxism." She snapped: "There's none

I have a vivid memory of saying to a Nixon Campaign Strategist — a very good friend, during a casual conversation — "I'd like to know about the connection between Nixon's Southern Strategy and racism." He snapped: "There's none!"

couldn't they well have a revival back to classical Marxism, despite the failure of the theories?

Certainly they could, but then they'd be Marxists, and that would involve wholesale re-working of their ideologies.

For Marx, and Marxists, the driver of history is class conflict & class consciousness. Being female, gay, black, third world, whatever --- doesn't mean shit compared to being part of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat.

This reductionism is one reason why classical Marxism never really caught on among feminists, queer activists, blacks, etc. It also explains why so many Marxist thinkers called in Hegel, Kant, Freud, Rousseau, etc to try & sand the hard edges off of Marx's corpus.

Is it so very hard to believe that there would more declared Marxists than declared Republicans in a given slice of academia? My impression is that that's pretty much par for the course. I didn't go to college traditionally (all night courses and correspondence) but the only prof I ever had who wanted to discuss his own political views with me was indeed a Marxist.

"The press is not really the problem, any more than it ever was with Reagan who had press so negative it bordered on retarded, but he won overwhelmingly. The problem is the electorate. It has been dumbed down to where it can't be talked to. It needs to see and feel it's mistakes, and it will. This is not the first time we have been here, but it is the most serious."

Reagan was a master at reaching the voters over the heads of the press. We don't have anyone capable of doing that now.

Romney thought he was reaching them as the crowds at his rallies suggested. He just didn't have the GOTV system that the Obama supporters had. That is a new reality that the GOP has to deal with now. It is frightening how powerful the technocrats have gotten. Whether democracy can deal with that remains to be seen.

I'm reading Coolidge now and it interesting to learn how difficult it was to resist the spenders even then.

Ted Cruze is my senator. I voted for him both in the primary and in the general election. The fact that he has riled up the Democrat establishment shows that he is doing exactly what we sent him to do.

I have no idea how many Harvard Law Professors are open Communists, and I don't care. I doubt very many other Texas care either. The exact number is unimportant.

I hope Senator Cruze tells them to stuff it. He expressed his opinion about what the professors believe based on his personal experience, and he's entitled to his opinion. If he had named individual professors, as his critics are hoping he will do, then he needs to offer something stronger than opinion. I hope he doesn't fall for that ploy. As it is, this is a tempest in a teapot.

If the new strategy for Prof. Althouse and the Democrats is a campaign to defend the Harvard faculty against unfair calumny--"they're Marxists, not Communists"--the Republicans are going to win every election from here on in.

I have a vivid memory of saying to a CLS lawprof — a very good friend, during a casual conversation — "I'd like to know about the connection between CLS and Marxism." She snapped: "There's none." I got the message: You sound right wing. It was understood that to sound right wing was to become toxic.

Gotta learn to play without the press in your corner or you Republicans will lose again and again.

No point whining about that! That's what you have to be ready for.

Yep. And it's time to stop playing defense. This has gone on too long.

Look what the Dems have done to California - with absolutely NO consequences. It's time the stinking albatross carcass was hung around their necks, and they were paraded down the street, to show how proud they are of their accomplishments.

Old-fashioned terms like Commie mean nothing. And it's not longer fat old southern white boys who are corrupt - the new breed wears sandals, the wine and cheese set. Hip. Necromongers. Destroy everything they touch. All in the name of 'saving you.'

bagoh20 said... The press is not really the problem, any more than it ever was with Reagan who had press so negative it bordered on retarded, but he won overwhelmingly.

But Reagan, like Obama, was special, in that he had a charisma that preceded his appearance on the political stage. His had been prepared during his Hollywood career and Obama's by all of black history in the U.S. and helped along by his physical grace and baritone voice.

Cruz will never be a guy with charisma. I'd go even further and say that, to many, he's unappealing on a gut level. And it doesn't help that he actually physically resembles Joe McCarthy and even has some of McCarthy's style when speaking.

If you are the president of the United States and you stand up in front of police and fire fighters and say that thousands of them will be fired and air traffic controllers will be let go and the military will have to let go thousands and unemployment will tick up as a result of 3 cents cut from every dollar they receive spread out over a decade or so … that’s one thing we don’t know what it is.

But if you are Cruz and perhaps you conflated some backwater legal theory with Communism or Marxism … we know what that is.

"Look what the Dems have done to California - with absolutely NO consequences."

As someone who has lived here and watched it happen, there are serious and obvious consequences, although not to the Democrats yet, but now there is nobody else to blame. The state provides almost none of what it did 30 years ago. The streets are a mess, the schools disasters, and the infrastructure crumbling. What does get done is done via federal money, and we thank you all for that. How long can you keep that up? We like the weather and voting for more spending every chance we get. Please don't harsh our mellow.

The "my shit don't stink and I'm an enlightened soul who doesn't get angry"

I don't know about the shit (always Shouting Thomas's favorite word) part, and I don't claim to be an enlightened soul, but I do believe it's possible to live the rest of my life without getting angry. I'm working on that.

Some of the lefty commenters are merely trolls looking for response to validate that they are alive and breathing. The appropriate response from Cruz is to quote their previous writings. I'll bet he can do that and make his case. Whether he does, is another question.

"In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" Karl Marx

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" has long been the definition of a Marxist or a communist.

"According to a survey conducted by The American Revolution Center, "more than 50 percent of Americans wrongly attributed the quote “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” to either George Washington, Thomas Paine, or President Barack Obama,"

Although CLS has been largely a U.S. movement, it was influenced to a great extent by European philosophers, such as nineteenth-century German social theorists Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Max Weber; Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt school of German social philosophy; the Italian marxist Antonio Gramsci . . .

The NYTimes, Boston Globe, and WaPo are dying. Newsweek is mostly dead, TIME is dying, the Big Three networks are fading, lefty radio is nonexistent.

One reason behind that is the whining.

It was too little, too late, because we have a socialist President and Congress and SCOTUS, and we have entered the stagnant phase of a standard no-growth economy from which the only escape is revolution.

I don't much care anymore whether the GOP gets its groove back. It's much too late now.

I am shocked shocked to find that Harvard Law School has a bunch of Marxists on its faculty.

So the "I don't give a shit about anything but getting a gig" anti-lefty suddenly got his dander up at the lying little low-IQ turn named phx.

Remember when you refused to get upset at the way your precious negro president was ruining the country? Remember how you mocked my anger at his destructive ways? Remember how you professed an air of non chalance, happy to be playing a gig at woodstock?

And suddenly, you think its time to get angry at a black-level IQ p.o.s. like phx?

He should explain why redistributive and retributive change schemes are opportunistic and cannibalistic. He should explain why consolidation (i.e. monopolization), especially through coercion (e.g. government), of capital and control in minority hands engenders sabotage of individual rights. Explain why exploiting incidental differentials and gradients denigrates individual dignity. Explain why not everyone will enjoy a beachfront property in Hawaii. Explain why elective abortion serves to devalue human life. Explain why there are no mortal gods and people should not sacrifice their dignity (and children) to curry favor with individuals who suffer from delusions of grandeur.

He should explain why dissociation of risk causes corruption. Why dreams of material, physical, and ego gratification motivates its progress.

He should, apparently, explain why our education system is so utterly incompetent, in part because it fails to distinguish between science and philosophy, in part because it favors individual corruption. How and why it is undermining our ability to compete with over six billion other people.

He should explain that left-wing fanatics prefer establishing monopolies, especially of capital and power, because that is they way they see fit to compete. They do believe in evolutionary fitness, but not of the species, only of their class.

I've met more than one person in the 1990s, and the individual I'm most thinking of was in academia and was "out" as a communist and "red diaper baby."

It may well have been impolitic to declare (or admit) that you were a communist in the 1990s but the only difference between her beliefs and ideas than others on the "left" was that she was willing to use that label for herself while she espoused the exact same things.

The NYTimes, Boston Globe, and WaPo are dying. Newsweek is mostly dead, TIME is dying, the Big Three networks are fading, lefty radio is nonexistent.

Yeah, and that's all a result of conservative whining about the media. The rise of cable TV, the internet and news apps had nothing to do with all that. Here's a prediction: in 10 years the NY Times will still exist, as an all-digital platform except perhaps the Sunday paper and magazine. And conservatives will still whine about it and call it irrelevant whilst complaining about it.

So... last night I clicked through from Instapundit to an article about some progressive "non profit" with a nefarious plan to destroy someone or other. I can't remember who it was (for all I know it was Cruz) or what the plan was because I got hung up at the very beginning of the quoted bits by a statement that they were promoting "progressive policies" such as better wages, affordable health care, clean air, etc. A nice list of "wants" without a single "policy" in sight.

In fact, it was a list of things that everyone wants. EVERYONE. Conservatives and Tea Party and Libertarians and Fascists and Progressives and Liberals and Monarchists and Dictators... everyone wants those things.

I think that anyone tending conservative be they Republican or Tea Party or most Libertarians and certainly anyone "small government" needs to continue non-stop complaints and pointing out every instance of media bias and hypocrisy (Rubio drinks water, the media carries Obama's water) and not let up a bit.

But I think that they might get a good deal of traction pointing out just what I did, no matter what flavor of not-Democrat they are... a list of happy wishes is not a *policy*. Everyone wants those things, but wanting them is not a plan to get them and OUR plan is one that will work instead of make things worse.

I think that anyone tending conservative be they Republican or Tea Party or most Libertarians and certainly anyone "small government" needs to continue non-stop complaints and pointing out every instance of media bias and hypocrisy (Rubio drinks water, the media carries Obama's water) and not let up a bit.

I think so too. But that's because I don't believe that's a winning argument for the right.

I would not mind that much if it is a profession well stocked with Marxists that cannot subvert or order the rest of society to do things without a vote. (Provided of course that they are not loyal to a non-American nation).In that way, if all the naturalists and US Park Service were Marxists - no impact on the rest of us. Or if all the chefs in restaurants were Marxists, or all the engineers in the utilities sector, or real estate people, or masons...no big deal.

But when it is in influencers that can subvert - like most school teachers sympathized with Marxist ideals or methods, if most progressive Jews in control of news or mass media enterprises or in prominent executive and editorial spots are Marxist by nature - that can be a real problem.And lawyers, because our system alone gives onto them the ability to bypass democracy and use the courts to defeat the will of the masses on matters like Cay Marriage bans, wealth redistribution.Because lawyers have that power, it is very worrisome that the top lawyers are now learning at the feet of academics at top law schools that encourage them to become progressive and Marxist flavored lawyers and judges that will shove societal transformation on the masses, bypassing the People's Will.

"Obama's poor brother who lives in a shack has a better understanding of economics than Obama."

All Obama has to understand about economics is what his Wall Street advisers tell him, as Obama's job is to do what he was hired to do: insure the plutocrats are protected from prosecution for their crimes and that they continue to be enriched by those crimes.

(You know, it must be a sinister and insidious communist plot! Obama will work for the greater and ongoing benefit of the financial elites as they rape the American people of what little we have left, until the people--embittered, desperate and enraged--rise up in a spontaneous revolution, dispose of our present system and install a Communist dicatorship of the people! Manchurian President Obama will thereupon take his rightful place as the 21st Century Lenin/Stalin/Mao. He will then preside over show trials and mass public hangings of those Wall Street swine whom he appeared to have so assiduously worked for even as he was covertly working to bring them down. Brilliant!)

Fair point, Paco. I should have been more clear. But I'll double down and say that the factors Pogo cites have nothing to do with the woes of newspaper or Big Three TV media. Those woes have to do with technology and the mass (i.e., non-ideological) marketplace. But I'll be happy to add delusions of grandeur to the other conservative characteristics of whining and claims of victimization. Thanks for providing me the opportunity to revise and extend my remarks.

That's an interesting way to say "What I wrote was a complete mischaracterization." But then, I never went to law school.

However, you are probably correct in thinking that the rise of the Internet and related economic phenomena have a lot more to do with the pitiful state of today's mass media than sniping by conservatives.

Back to the original topic, Cruz probably shouldn't have given a specific number -- twelve, was it? -- because now he'll be expected to produce 12, and while it wouldn't surprise me at all if all the faculty minus one or two turned out to be existentially Marxist at heart, I doubt he's gonna find 12 Party memberships.

I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with market economics, somehow you're not a Communist. We need to stand up and say we're Communists, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any Capitalist.

It's a fact of life, but I do not understand why the charge of McCarthyism is more damaging than the charge of Communism. At the end of his life, Alger Hiss gave paid speeches at Harvard where he was given a standing ovation. Hiss got to wear the hero's mantle, and McCarthy died a sour drunk......I think that being a Soviet spy is a far worse crime than being an overwrought anti-communist, but that's not the opinion in Hollywood or at Harvard......Soviet espionage was not a victimless crime. American planes were shot down in Korea and Vietnam by proximity fuses. The knowledge of these fuses was supplied to the Soviets by the Rosenberg spy ring. The establishment of the North Korean regime was to some extent enabled by the Soviet spy apparatus......Instead of hurling charges of Communist at these people, I would recommend throwing dessicated bodies of Korean famine victims at them. Every time they appear in public throw the dead body of a Korean baby at them. The North Korean regime is in need of hard currency, and I'm sure that they would provide corpses at a reasonable price.